Bocada looks at data protection market through Prism

Bocada reckons it has built a next-generation backup reporting product by embedding Enterprise v5.4 product technology in an ITIL-like service process management framework.

Crudely speaking, a service delivery management layer has been bolted on and integrated into a Bocada Enterprise 5.4 base, and has dubbed the result Prism. Enterprise 5.4, like Aptare and EMC's Data Protection Advisor (formerly WysDM), reports on heterogeneous backup operations, providing a centralised view of the status of multiple backup jobs.

Aptare and DPA have extended their reporting to include replication activities. Bocada has responded with its large enterprise base general use of services delivery frameworks like ITIL, by providing an “ITSM-like” model for improving their data protection operations. It says it helps them focus these on business objectives and customer satisfaction goals.

ITSM is IT Services Management and it focusses on the delivery of IT services, aiming for continuous improvement, rather than on the technology of IT. With Prism, Bocada says its IT department customers can run backups more cost-effectively and provide better data protection services to their customers, be they internal or external. That's the Prism marketing schtick anyway.

What Bocada has done is add ITSM features and data workflow in and on top of its Enterprise product base so that customers can bring their backup operations process into a data protection service management model. It says no other data protection management vendor can do this.

Core Prism applications are Health Check, Problem Management, SLA Management and Policy Management, and it has an interactive searchable Knowledge Base. The product has built-in workflow, intelligent SLA impact analysis, policy change analysis and a knowledge base data base. Unlike Bocada Enterprise, it has a completely web-based front end and new APIs. These enable better integration with third party solutions, such as trouble ticketing applications.

Prism automatically determines SLA compliance. Bocada CEO Nancy Hurley said in a prepared statement: "Prism intuitively determines if errors will impact SLAs and immediately points customers to the path to resolution." It detects backup problems that affect committed service level agreements and alerts an appropriate level of support to get the problems fixed.

Bocada says any managed service provider (MSP), SaaS or Cloud services vendor offering backup and data protection services is a target Prism customer, particularly if they have adopted or plan to adopt ITSM initiatives, and are subject to compliance regulations.

It will provide an upgrade path to Prism from Enterprise 5.4 around the mid-year point. No pricing information was revealed. ®